In the near future, the Department of Defense (DoD) plans to provide both secure classified and protected unclassified capabilities to its 600,000 mobile device users.
The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) is bringing this vision to life by developing a DoD-wide Mobile Device Management system and Mobile Application Store.
“We are building a secure 4G wireless network that will get iPads, iPhones and Android devices online by mid-2014,” said Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a recent Defense News story. “With tools like this, the smartphone generation joining our military will help us pioneer a new era of mobile command and control.”
It is believed that DISA’s commitment to commercial off-the-shelf mobile technology will be a key turning point for the entire mobile government sector.
Ultimately, this move underscores the value and importance of mobile solutions for the warfighter. As the DoD embraces new ‘consumerized’ technologies that combine next-generation security and access control capabilities, we will see the defense and intelligence communities being fully mobilized while securely accessing any type of data in near real time.
Another aspect to this strategy is Gen. Dempsey’s comment regarding the ‘smartphone generation’ and how this applies to the changing culture of the warfighter.
One of Google’s mottos is “Work The Way You Live,” and this same strategy is evident in DISA’s execution. Working with Google, our company has always strived to bring commercially proven technologies to the DoD space for the same reason: people are more comfortable with tools they recognize from their everyday lives. As young people enter careers in the DoD, DISA will be able to deliver technologies that resonate with what they know.
In addition, there are a number of industry solutions that make creating and effectively managing mobile apps much easier. These offerings allow the DoD to receive immediate updates from the battlefield with apps that are fully integrated with the core enterprise.
These smart apps also allow users to dynamically change features and add context-based functionality by location, time and the user, while providing seamless data updates and fully enabled geospatial capabilities.
In addition, these new offerings fully reinforce DISA’s move to use consumer-off-the-shelf solutions, which allow users to send new features on the fly, as well as publish apps with the simple click of one button.
We applaud DISA’s efforts for advancing mobility for the DoD, which will lay the foundation for other government agencies to follow suit. The mobile frontier is very much upon us, and our military is taking the right steps to leverage these technologies for supporting mission goals and requirements.
